ring no little resemblance to that notable
bird of the crane family, yclept the mudpoke. When he thought his crimes
had been forgotten or forgiven, he would sneak back to the fort with a
bundle of skins or a load of poultry, which, perchance, he had stolen, and
would exchange them for liquor, with which having well soaked his carcase,
he would lie in the sun, and enjoy all the luxurious indolence of that
swinish philosopher Diogenes. He was the terror of all the farmyards in
the country, into which he made fearful inroads; and sometimes he would
make his sudden appearance in the garrison at daybreak, with the whole
neighborhood at his heels; like the scoundrel thief of a fox, detected in
his maraudings and hunted to his hole. Such was this Dirk Schuiler; and
from the total indifference he showed to the world and its concerns, and
from his truly Indian stoicism and taciturnity, no one would ever have
dreamt that he would have been the publisher of the treachery of Risingh.

When the carousal was going on, which proved so fatal to the brave
Poffenburgh and his watchful garrison, Dirk skulked about from room to
room, being a kind of privileged vagrant, or useless hound whom nobody
noticed. But though a fellow of few words, yet, like your taciturn people,
his eyes and ears were always open, and in the course of his prowlings he
overheard the whole plot of the Swedes. Dirk immediately settled in his
own mind how he should turn the matter to his own advantage. He played the
perfect jack-of-both-sides--that is to say, he made a prize of everything
that came in his reach, robbed both parties, stuck the copper-bound cocked
hat of the puissant Van Poffenburgh on his head, whipped a huge pair of
Risingh's jack-boots under his arms, and took to his heels, just before
the catastrophe and confusion at the garrison.

Finding himself completely dislodged from his haunt in this quarter, he
directed his flight towards his native place, New Amsterdam, whence he had
formerly been obliged to abscond precipitately, in consequence of
misfortune in business--that is to say, having been detected in the act of
sheep-stealing. After wandering many days in the woods, toiling through
swamps, fording brooks, swimming various rivers, and encountering a world
of hardships that would have killed any other being but an Indian, a
backwoodsman, or the devil, he at length arrived, half famished, and lank
as a starved weasel, at Communipaw, where he stole a